Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Mahler's Farewell

Today it is exactly 100 years ago that one of the greatest composers of all time, Gustav Mahler, passed away at age 50. To honour him, I post an excerpt of what I consider the most beautiful piece of music ever composed, Das Lied von der Erde. The sixth movement, appropriately titled Abschied (Farewell), lasts about 30 minutes, with the final 8 minutes available in this clip. The singer is the incomparable Kathleen Ferrier, herself having passed away shortly after this recording, aged only 41. Life is not fair, or as in the words of this masterpiece "Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod" (Dark is life, dark is death).

The Blogger

About me:Dutchman, married to a beautiful and highly talented artist from Shanghai. Although my education (PhD chemistry) is very much associated with the left side of the brain, I like to use my right side for my hobbies: music, art, photography.

About this blog:I started this blog in August 2006, just wanting to share what I considered interesting pieces of visual art and music. I suffered from blogging blues for most of 2008, but making a fresh start in October of that year has done wonders for my inspiration.In case you did not notice, most posts end with a small symbol... just click that for the relevant link.All pictures in my blog are hosted on blogger - if some do not show up (the red cross syndrome) it is a blogger hiccup. Right click and selecting "show picture" should do the trick.

About the reconstruction:

End March 2017 I converted thousands of posts to draft, in order to sort out potential copyright issues. Many of these have been restored in the course of the year.

Links of interest

Reactions

Reactions: please send an email to artrock2006@gmail.com or leave a comment on FaceBook.

Copyright issues?

Most of the images used in this blog are either mine, or they are used with explicit permission of the creators, or they are in the public domain. Album cover and movie poster images are sourced on the internet and they are considered fair use for discussion at a non-profit blog.

The magnifying glass based images that occur once in a while have been put in place to show images at thumbnail size, this being considered fair use (link).

If you still find a picture on this blog that you are the copyright owner of, and object against the use, please drop me an email and I will remove it.